🚀 go-pugleaf

Bruce F. Webster wrote:
> 
> Tom Harrigan wrote:
> >
> > It's amazing how great that game was compared to the flashy junk that's
> > been coming out lately.
> >
> > [Snipped]
> >
> > > : Actually, I think the game was called SunDog, which ran on the Apple II,
> > > : and was truly awesome for its time. Written by a guy named Bruce Webster,
> > >
> > > The game was written by FTL Software, and I believe it debuted on the
> > > Atari ST.  It was one of the first games I bought fot it - it was truly
> > > awesome for the time.  Very much like Privateer - you traded, explored
> > > planets, got robbed ont he street, used teleporters, went to the bank,
> > > flew in space, hyperjumped, and had dogfights.  VERY cool.
> 
> Thanks for the kind words, one and all. After some 22 years of
> software engineering and other activities, I still remain proudest of
> SunDog: Frozen Legacy, and it means a lot that others still think fondly
> of it. :-)
> 
> A few additions, corrections, and trivia:
> 
> -- Wayne Holder was co-designer of the game and still (to my knowledge)
>    runs FTL Games in San Diego.
> 
> -- SunDog first came out on the Apple II and was released at the West
>    Coast Computer Faire in March, 1984. It was written in Apple Pascal
>    (roughly 15,000 lines) and 6502 assembly (roughly 5000 lines). I
>    did about 95% of the coding for version 1.0 and 90% for version
>    2.0 (shipped October 1984). It came on a double-sided floppy (280KB
>    storage) that you had to manually remove and flip over, and ran in
>    64KB of RAM.
> 
> -- I wrote the graphics library from scratch; it supported multiple
>    overlapping windows, drag-and-drop icons, and joystick control
>    (we were heavily influenced by Apple's Lisa computer, the precursor
>    to the Macintosh). I also developed tools for editing icons, fonts,
>    and maps. I even wrote a p-code/6502 disassembler so that
>    we could hack the p-code interpreter.
> 
> -- The Atari ST version--which had graphics and animation I could only
>    dream about--was done by Doug Bell, Mike Newton, and Andy Jaros,
> again
>    with contributions from Wayne. It came out (I believe) in late 1985
> or
>    early 1986. FTL's big success, though, was DungeonMaster.
> 
> -- The subtitle (Frozen Legacy) was a play on words, referring both to
>    the fact that you couldn't get clear title to your inherited starship
>    until you fulfilled your late uncle's contract and to the fact that
>    fulfilling that contract involved finding and transporting
> cryogenically
>    stored colonists.
> 
> -- SunDog was to be a trilogy. The second game (SunDog: Old Scores to
> Settle)
>    was to deal with finding out why your uncle died and was advertised
> in the
>    game credits. The third game would deal with the political
> ramifications of
>    what you discovered.
> 
> -- SunDog wasn't the game we originally set out to develop. We started
>    out doing the computer version of a solitare SF RPG called Star
> Smuggler
>    from DwarfStar Games (a division of Heritage USA). Two months into
> the
>    project, Heritage went into bankruptcy--before we had finalized the
>    rights. So we had to throw out all that work and start from scratch
>    with a brand new game design that wouldn't infringe on Star Smuggler.
> 
> -- SunDog was actually set in the game universe of an SF RPG that I was
>    developing before I started work at FTL Games and continued work on
>    while at FTL. I had generated four sectors of systems, with names for
>    each system and tech levels, law levels, wealth levels, and names for
>    each planet. We used one of those sectors for SunDog and would have
>    expanded to the others for the sequels. A few of the planet/system
>    names were anagrams of company and personal names.
> 
> -- I left FTL Games in October of 1984, a week after SunDog 2.0 was
> released.
>    I was so burned out that I did not do professional software
> development again
>    until four years later, when I took a contract position at Apple
> Computer.
>    I was fortunate to be able to support myself with writing and
> teaching in
>    the meantime.
> 
> Probably more than y'all wanted to know, but there it is. I keep
> swearing that
> I'm going to do a modern version of SunDog someday, but I'm not sure if
> that'll
> happen. Ah, well...thanks again for the kind words.  ..bruce..
> 
> --------------------------------------
> bruce f. webster | bweb...@bfwa.com |
> Bruce F. Webster and Associates, Inc.|
>     http://www.bfwa.com/~bwebster    |
> --------------------------------------

Bruce,

 Wow thanks for the flash back..... I can honestly say that I have always felt that 
sundog was/is one of the best games I ever played. Too bad a sequal was never made, I 
spent many a late night on that game. I've been thinking that maybe its because I am 
getting older now but I rarely if ever stay up late playing games anymore. Seems that 
the flashier a game gets the less I play. Maybe someday you can put out sundog 2 for the 
Ibm... I would buy it. You could even update a few things on the first sundog and 
re-release it... I would still buy it. Battlecruiser 3000 is a game I was hoping would 
rekindle the ol' space fire like Sundog and the first wing-commander game 
did (wing-commander is another game that really hasnt got any better due to added 
graphics.) If you ever need any help and you decide to look into Sundog 2.... write me. 
I am sure there are plenty of us semi-old timers in gaming that would love to help out.

-Brian